Marienvokalconsort: |Wie mit vollen Chören

What music, one may wonder, once sounded in the three medieval market churches of St Nikolai, St Peter’s, and St Mary’s in the twin-city Berlin-Cölln, formerly part of the Brandenburg electorate and later of the Prussian kingdom? The present disc probes into this question, and revives music of the 16th and 17th centuries form Berlin’s historic centre. Under the direction of Marie-Louise Schneider, the Marienvokalconsort and the Marienensemble perform works whose composers were active as cantors at the three churches between 1582 and 1702: it was here that Johann Crüger and Johann Georg Ebeling composed the well-known chorale settings of texts by Paul Gerhard, which still count among the most cherished songs of the Evangelisches Gesangbuch. Among others, the CD records ‘Du, meine Seele, singe’, ‘Fröhlich soll mein Herze springen’, and ‘Jesu meine Freude’. The performers complement these pieces with motets and cantatas by Leonhard Camerer, Philipp Westphal, and Magnus Peter Henningsen. The cantatas by Magnus Peter Henningsen are recorded on CD for the first time – only in 2002 did these works return to the archive of the Berlin Sing-Akademie from Kiev. In their endeavour, the Marienensemble with its period instruments and the choir and soloists of the Marienvokalconsort retrieve,at long last, a musical treasure from the 17th century.